Goals & Questions

Goals

• To encourage students to evaluate and reflect on their assumptions about theatre, plot, and storytelling.
• To expose students to a different genre of theatre.
• To provide a model for teachers and their students for engaging with theatre and thinking critically about a performance.
• To practice analyzing and expressing individual viewpoints about an artistic work.

Essential Questions

• What do we think of when we think of a play?
• What do we expect to see when we go to a live theatre performance?
• How do we think about and discuss the intention or thesis of an artistic work?
• How can we apply the techniques we use to analyze literature to analysis of a live performance?

State Learning Goals

• Illinois State Goal 25.A.4 Analyze and evaluate the effective use of elements, principles, and expressice qualities in a…drama.
• 25.A.5 Analyze and evaluate student and professional works for how aesthetic qualities are use to convey intent, expressive ideas and/or meaning.
• 27.A.4b Analyze how the arts are used to inform and persuade through traditional and contemporary art forms.
• 27.B.4b Understand how the arts change in response to changes in society.
• 27.B.5 Analyze how the arts shape and reflect ideas, issues or themes in a particular culture or historical time period.
• 2.A.5a Compare and evaluate oral, written or viewed works from various eras and traditions and analyze complex literary devices (e.g., structures, images, forms, foreshadowing, flashbacks, stream of consciousness).
• 2.A.5b Evaluate relationships between and among character, plot, setting, theme, conflict and resolution and their influence on the effectiveness of a literary piece.
• 2.B.4c Discuss and evaluate motive, resulting behavior and consequences demonstrated in literature.
• 4.A.4a Apply listening skills as individuals and members of a group in a variety of settings (e.g., lectures, discussions, conversa-tions, team projects, presentations, interviews).
• 4.B.5b Use speaking skills to participate in and lead group discussions

Pre-Show Activity

Brainstorming Activities

As a class, ask students to work together to answer the question: What is a play?

Write the question on the board, and ask students what they think defines a play. Make a list of student responses.

Ask students to focus on plot. What is a plot? What elements does a good story need?

Group Exercise

Working in small groups, have students write a “rubric” for a play. Have them choose key elements of a play from the two brainstorming exercises in one column, and define those elements in the next column. Hold onto these rubrics so the students can re-visit them in the post-show activity.

Short Responses

Either in groups, or as a take-home exercise, have students research and write short (3-5 sentence) responses to the following questions. Here are some good resources to get them started:

• Absurdist Theatre: A Resource Guide. Indiana University.
• A Video History of the Theatre of the Absurd. Short Animation by Theater Ninjas, a Cleveland theater company, in promotion of their 2008 show, Mad World. Features funny penguins talking about what Theatre of the Absurd is and how it got started.
• A Lesson in Absurdist Theatre. A conversation with the cast of Northern Arizona University Theatre's presentation of The Bald Soprano and The Lesson. An interesting and at times inspiring little documentary-style video that would be great for drama students.
• The Theatre of the Absurd by Martin Esslin. The introduction provides some good background and is available in the online preview of this book.

Questions

• What is the definition of absurd humor?
• What are some characteristics of absurd humor?
• What are some examples of absurd humor?
• Who are some key figures in absurd theatre?

List some common elements of absurd theatre. Save this list for the post-show activity.

Post-Show Activities

Short Responses

As soon after the show as possible, ask students to write short responses to the following questions:

• Why is it hoped that nothing will happen in this show?
• Who hopes this? The playwright? The actors? The characters? Explain why.
• Does anything happen? If so, what?
• What, if any, transformation do the characters undergo?

Ask students to look back at their lists of common elements of absurd humor/absurd theatre. As a small group discussion, or as a written exercise, ask students to decide whether the elements on their list were present in the performance. Students should explain and defend their reasons why or why not they believe that element was represented in the performance.

Ask students to return to their small groups to revisit their “definition of a play” rubrics. Ask students to compare their expectations of a play, based on their rubrics, with Performance in Which Hopefully Nothing Happens. What conventions of theatre did the performance satirize or ignore? Did the performance have a thesis or message? Was it successful as a comedy? Why or why not?

Digging Deeper

Read the introduction to The Theatre of the Absurd by Martin Esslin. Does Performance in Which Hopefully Nothing Happens fit his description of Theatre of the Absurd? How so or how not?

Research the philosophical school of thought of Absurdism. What are the basic principles and who are the key figures? In what historical period did this philosophy arise, and how is it or is it not connected to the events of its time? As a writing assignment, students can research an author of absurdist fiction or an absurdist playwright and write about his or her life, work, and philosophy. As an in-depth reading and writing project, students could read a work of absurdist fiction or theatre and complete a paper and/or oral presentation on the work and how it reflects the absurdist school of thought.

Reading List

• Theatre of the Absurd by Martin Esslin
• Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
• The Bald Soprano by Eugène Ionesco
• Rhinoceros by Eugène Ionesco
• The Chairs by Eugène Ionesco
• The Real Inspector Hound by Tom Stoppard
• Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard